Category: Staff Training

March 29, 2017

Spotlight on Managerial Success – The Class!

You’ve hired a manager. Someone to help you run the day-to-day operations of your business. Someone to be in charge when you aren’t there. Someone to handle personnel issues and make sure all the tasks like stocking, straightening, cleaning, and serving the customers gets done. Someone to schedule (and train) the staff. Someone to give you the free time to do your jobs of buying inventory and drawing traffic and crunching numbers and plotting strategy.

You want a manager who is Reliable, Hard-Working, and Decisive.
You want a manager who is Compassionate, Empathetic, and Service-Oriented.
You want a manager who can build a Team, Communicate Effectively, Teach and Resolve Conflicts.

They have to bring some of those skills to the table. That last line of skills can be taught.

Here is the program I have designed to teach those teachable skills to you and/or your managers.

First we’ll start off the morning by doing some Team Building exercises, both to break the ice, and to show you how to incorporate such exercises into your training programs. You’ll learn a handful of activities you can run yourself, including how to choose the right activity for the level of your group, the steps necessary to build a team the right way, and the techniques used to apply the lessons from the activities to the actual workplace. This is the stuff big corporations pay big bucks for. This is the stuff I did almost exclusively in the late 80’s and early 90’sand incorporated into all my staff trainings over the years at Toy House.

Second, we’ll spend some time doing Communication exercises that help you become a better listener and a better, more clear communicator. You’ll learn how to make yourself easier to understand, how to persuade people to see your point of view, and how to get your directions followed more precisely. Poor communication is most often the cause of breakdowns of teams. It starts with you. Get this right and you have won more than half the battle.

That will get us to lunch. We’ll take a break.

After lunch we’ll delve into identifying and fixing problems. You’ll learn how to settle Conflicts between staff members that makes everyone feel valued. You’ll learn how to get others to buy-in to your philosophies and ways of doing things. (You’ll learn skills that top FBI negotiators use to always get their way even while creating a win-win situation.) Plus, you’ll learn how to keep your team motivated to do their best work. Here’s a big hint – money is not the only or even the best motivator. In fact it ranks fourth. You’ll learn the other three in this class.

Finally, you’ll design your own training programs both for new hires and for continued training & development of your current team. You’ll learn skills that help you Teach in a way that everyone remembers. Some people are born to teach. Others have to learn. You can learn.

If you are the owner and you have a manager…

Ask yourself how much time you would save having a manager trained in those skills.
Ask yourself how many headaches you would save having a manager trained in those skills.
Ask yourself how much money you would save having a manager trained in those skills.
Ask yourself, would you be willing to give up your manager for just one day to save all that time and money and headaches?

The first SPOTLIGHT ON MANAGERIAL SUCCESS class will be in Jackson, MI on Wednesday, April 26 from 8am to 4pm.

Because this is the inaugural class, the regular price of $250/business has been lowered to only $50/person. Yes, only $50/person!

I am offering it through the Jackson Retail Success Academy™ in association with Spring Arbor University. The class will take place in the Hosmer Center for Entrepreneurship at the SAU Downtown Jackson campus. (Take this class and you’ll become a JRSA™ Alumni which gets you discounted pricing on many other JRSA™ offerings.)

Space is limited to the first 18 people to register. Click here to sign up today.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS If you’re not in Jackson or can’t easily get to Jackson, get in touch and we’ll figure out how to do this training closer to your home.

PPS If you’re not sure if you should take this class, answer this question. Do you manage three or more people? If you said Yes, take this class.

March 28, 2017

Training for Store Managers

My trip through the malls recently has me wondering… Where is the true breakdown in the staff training? You can start with the store managers since ultimately they are responsible for training the frontline staff, but that begs the question. Are those managers properly trained to be a store manager? In a chain store you could ask the same question of district managers and regional managers all the way up to the top. (In an independent retailer there is only you and/or your store manager – are either of you trained for that role?)

According to the National Retail Federation, there are approximately 3.9 million retail establishments in the United States employing almost 29 million people. If you consider that each one of those stores has either a store manager or an owner/operator working as the manager, that means there are at least 3.9 million people in the United States who have the role of manager (and likely another three or four million assistant managers).

Hammond Hardware 2015 Jackson Retail Success Academy

What training are you giving yourself or your managers?

Are you training your managers on Communication Skills so that they can better relate to and communicate with the staff?
Are you training your managers on Teaching Skills so that they can better share what they know with the staff?
Are you training your managers on Team Building techniques so that they can create a better team culture?
Are you training your managers on Conflict Resolution so that they can keep harmony on the team without just firing someone every time there is a problem (or worse, just sweeping it under the rug)?

Would you send your manager to an all-day workshop that covered those skills? (Would you attend a workshop like that yourself?)

Managers may or may not be in the position to make the decisions on advertising, hiring and firing, and inventory. But the one thing all managers do is manage people. The “soft skills” like Communication, Team Building and Conflict Resolution are necessary for managers to be successful, but are brutal to learn by trial and error. They need to be taught.

You should be hiring managers who already bring the traits of Compassion, Empathy, Leadership, and a Service Mentality. You can train all the rest.

I am developing a program just for managers that teaches those soft skills. How much would that be worth to your business?

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I’ll be doing this program here in Jackson first to fine-tune it before taking it on the road. Let me know what it would be worth to do such a training in your town.

March 27, 2017

Only One Out of Fourteen Said Hello

Over the last few weeks I’ve visited some big malls. Call it field research. These malls have been busy, packed with customers. These malls are also packed with stores you’ve read about that are struggling and closing locations around the country. I saw a fair amount of Going Out of Business signs. One mall is losing its Macy’s. Another has a Sears and a JC Penney as anchors. I’m sure the leasing agents are nervous.

In my last two trips I visited fourteen stores in those malls.

Only one greeted me with a sincere hello.

Only one made me feel welcome and tried to connect with me instead of bombard me with sales pitches. Only one asked me a question that wasn’t a version of “Can I help you?” or “What brings you in?”. Heck, some of them never interacted with me at all.

The traffic was there in the mall. The mall owner had done his job. The food court and the Starbucks seemed to be making sales. But there were a lot of other sales being left on the table by the untrained sales teams.

Here is a quick recap of the experience…

Six of the stores never greeted me at all. I entered the store. Looked around. Touched a couple items. Walked out. No one said hello or hi or welcome or thanks for coming in. It wasn’t that these stores were necessarily busy. Maybe they were a bit understaffed, but there are still ways to teach your staff to greet new customers even when engaged with someone. Maybe they couldn’t afford enough staff because they weren’t training their staff how to sell. Either way, I left feeling neglected.

Five of the stores greeted me with some form of, “Can I help you?” or “What brings you in?” In all five cases I responded with the two words you never want a customer to say – Just Looking. I verbalized out loud that I was NOT there to buy. I told everyone including myself I was only browsing.

One store shoved a coupon in my hand for 20% off their already 40% off discounted prices. I guess they don’t value their merchandise very highly. Or maybe they could see I was a transactional customer and needed that little push to get me to pull the trigger? Oh wait. How could they know that considering they hadn’t asked me a single question? I will give this store credit in that every single person on their team approached me at least once during my walk through their store. They had a willingness and desire to sell, if not the actual training on how to do it properly. As misguided as it was, at least it was better than the indifference other stores had shown.

Only one store, however, greeted me with a sincere hello. This gal greeted me as if I had just entered her house. She was in the process of straightening up a display. She stopped, greeted me with enthusiasm, and started a conversation. Pretty soon we were sharing stories of trips to Florida and Phoenix and anywhere warmer than Detroit. Shortly after that I was asking her questions about product that wasn’t just, “Do you have this size in back?” We were engaged in conversation. We were engaged in getting to know each other. When she offered to show me something new she was excited about, I immediately said Yes! I learned about a product I never would have known otherwise, never would have searched for online, never would have considered if she hadn’t first made a connection.

That is the “shopping experience” customers visiting malls and shopping centers and downtowns are craving. That is the shopping experience that gets people to come back and bring their friends. That is the shopping experience that makes your cash registers ring. Everything else is just a transaction, more easily done on a computer.

The traffic is there. You just need to connect.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS If you were counting, there was one store I didn’t mention. Actually it was a food kiosk. If you run a food kiosk that regularly has a line of customers, can you please make it obvious where the line starts and how it should form? Please? Don’t make me guess where to stand. Don’t make me guess where to place the order. Don’t make me stand where people have to keep cutting through me to get past me.

March 23, 2017

How to Teach a Class in Your Store

You know why you need to teach classes in your store. Here are the six steps you take to create a class that draws traffic, builds excitement, gains you followers, sets you up as the expert, and makes people want to buy from you.

Determine which product(s) you sell that takes the longest to explain or takes the most trips before the customer pulls the trigger. These are the items to build your class around because these are the items that require an expert. The more questions a customer asks about a product, the more likely you’ll find people wanting to attend a class to learn more.
Write down all the questions a customer typically asks about the product. Then add in two more questions you think they should be asking. This will become the outline of your presentation. (You can brainstorm this list with your sales staff.)
List all the benefits of the products (remember, a feature is what the product does, a benefit is why that helps the user).
List all the downsides of the product. Everything has a downside. If you don’t tell your customer up front, she will think you’re hiding something. Being honest about the downsides wins you trust.
Get the customer to visualize using the product in her home or in her life. Ask questions like, “How would you use this?” Where would you use this?” “Do you see yourself using this?” “How would this affect your life right now?” This moves the customer from being in analytical mode to being in ownership mode. We only do in real life what we have already visualized in our minds. Get your customer to visualize owning the product and you will be more likely to win the sale.
List all the reasons why someone should buy this product from you. If you offer services like layaway or financing or delivery or assembly, this is when you share that information. If you truly have answered all the most important questions including the ones they forgot to ask, and you have helped them visualize owning and using the product, then you have their permission to sell them. Just remember that you aren’t selling a product, you are selling a solution.

That’s the class. It is no different than selling to one person while a bunch of other people sit in and listen. You can decorate with comfortable seating, snacks & prizes (ask your vendors for giveaways), cool signs, etc. Just make sure you follow the steps above so that you offer a true benefit to your customers. They’ll thank you for the effort with their pocketbooks.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Don’t worry about attendance. You might get 30 people, you might get 3. Make them feel special. Go above and beyond what they expect. Not only will you get the sale, you’ll get the referral, which is often a more powerful sales tool than the class, itself.

PPS Just a reminder that it doesn’t have to be that expensive to advertise. Social media, email, your website, some in-store signage, and a few online community calendars will draw a crowd. Make it worth their while and they’ll help you draw the next crowd.

March 15, 2017

Why You Should Teach What You Know

Here’s a myth worth busting… “Thanks to the Internet, the customers know more about the products than the sales people.” If you believe that, you’ve given up. Might as well close up now and avoid further losses.

First, not all customers do the research. There is a big group of people who don’t want all that knowledge. They are looking for someone who already has that knowledge that they can trust.

Second, there is a big difference between knowledge and wisdom. As the quote we’ve all seen says, “Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. wisdom is knowing not to include it in a fruit salad.” You have wisdom. You know what your product does and why that is important.

You need to teach.

I know your first objection. If I teach it, they’ll just take what they learn and go buy it somewhere else cheaper. Guess what? That person was going to go buy it somewhere else cheaper anyway. Period. Without the class, you would never have seen them in the store in the first place and had the chance to turn them into a customer. I would rather they got the knowledge from me so that they got the right product. Even if they didn’t buy it from me, they will know I steered them right. That may be just enough to get their business next time.

I know your other objection. It takes too much time and energy (and money) to put together a presentation, draw a crowd, and share your proprietary information with others. Oh, but that time and energy is well worth it when you look at the benefits.

When you teach a class on your products, you attract customers to your store who are actively in the market for the products you sell. No one else is coming to your class. Think of it as the most direct of direct marketing. The class brings you exactly the customers already in the market for what you are selling.

When you teach a class you send a message out to everyone that you are the expert on the subject. For some people, just finding an expert is good enough for them. They trust you because you are willing to put your name and reputation on the line with this class. The press is also paying attention and looking for the expert they can interview when the time arises.

When you teach a class you get to control the wisdom and make it relevant and important. You make sure the audience understands why one product might be desirable over another. You get to answer the questions they often forget to ask. You get to answer the questions they didn’t know to ask, which only helps to cement the thought of you as the expert in their minds.

When you teach a class you gain followers and fans. People will look up to you as the leader in this category.

When you teach a class you create excitement in your store. Your parking lot will be more full. Your store will be more full. Your walk-in customers will wonder at the all the buzz.

When you teach a class in your store you will get asked to teach that class to groups outside of your store. That’s the icing on this cake. That’s the outreach that helps you find new markets of customers.

Not the teacher type? The next post will show you HOW to teach that class. It isn’t as hard as you think.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS It doesn’t have to be that expensive, either. You don’t need a big space. Move a few fixtures and do it in your store. You don’t need a lot of advertising. Social media, email, your website, some in-store signage, and a few online community calendars will draw a crowd. Make it worth their while and they’ll help you draw the next crowd.

PPS Schedule your best staff to work the floor while you teach and make it mandatory that any staff not working the floor during the class is attending the class. You can kill two birds with one stone by teaching your customers and your staff at the same time. Win-win!!

March 14, 2017

One Little Problem, One Big Mess

I went down to the basement this Sunday to turn on some lights and make sure it was presentable for a house showing in three hours. It wasn’t. At the bottom of the stairs I encountered a huge puddle of water and a steady drip, drip, drip from the floorboards above. There were only two things that could have put water in that area – the dishwasher and the refrigerator. I turned off the water to both of them and grabbed a mop.

The carpet remnant laying in the area was soaked. All ten by eleven feet had sucked up a fair amount of water. I rolled that carpet up and out of the way and started mopping. I figured if I could get the area clean and dry, I could worry about the source of the leak (which had stopped) later.

It wasn’t until Monday night that I found it. I fixed it with a .40 part from the local hardware store.

A small leak in the supply line to our refrigerator ice maker had dumped an entire bucket of water into our basement and almost derailed a house showing.

Isn’t that the same with business? A little leak can cost you a ton of business.

An employee who isn’t trained and ready for the floor gets shoved out there because of a shortage of staff and through no fault of his own angers the first two customers he faces.

A common problem grows into a huge hassle with Yelp reviews and threats of lawsuits because someone didn’t listen closely enough to the unhappy customer.

A mis-tagged price change upsets a regular customer who quietly becomes an un-regular customer.

A rarely-updated website gives out wrong information that causes a customer to search elsewhere for a product you have.

A Facebook page gives out the wrong hours and a customer stays home even though you were open.

An employee cluster discussing last night’s show misses a customer needing help who doesn’t want to bother the group discussion.

A missed note about being out of copy paper keeps you from printing off the directions to your customer’s favorite game and being her hero.

These are all small leaks, but they can fill a lot of buckets with the missed sales and missing cash. Some say you need to work on the big leaks first. But those are obvious and already get your attention. Keep an eye out for the small leaks, too. Although harder to find, those are easier and quicker to fix and will pay off dividends.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Fortunately, the refrigerator was a cheap and easy fix. Better yet, not knowing if it was the dishwasher or the refrigerator, I found an even smaller leak in the dishwasher that my buddy, Alan, was able to fix before it became a bigger problem. Sometimes it pays to go looking for little leaks and fixing them now before they become big leaks.

PPS When you find a small leak, your first reaction is to do a temporary fix, figuring you’ll get back to it later. Pro tip: you never get back to it later. Fix it right the first time.

March 8, 2017

Hiring People Who Believe

I stepped out of my comfort zone tonight. You read this blog because you’re an independent retailer. At least that’s who I normally write and speak to. Tonight I spoke to dentists. I spoke the Jackson District Dental Society about hiring and training.

Jackson District Dental Society

Their issues are interesting. They hire hygienists and assistants who need specialized skills and training and degrees. They hire front office staff who need to know deep terminology exclusive to their trade and the idiosyncrasies of dental insurance. They need a well-balanced staff to maximize their profits. If they aren’t seeing patients, they aren’t making money. Not exactly the same as hiring for retail.

Or is it?

As I learned years ago, there are certain skills I can teach and certain traits you have to bring with you. When you hire the right traits, your team is better right from the start.

Simon Sinek said it best… “The goal is not just to hire people who need a job; it’s to hire people who believe what you believe. I always say that, you know, if you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money, but if they believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears…”

Hire people who believe what you believe.

In a dentist’s office or a toy store, it makes a huge difference. If you like to joke around and have fun and you hire someone who doesn’t, you’ll both be miserable. If you like everything to go exactly like the book and you hire a maverick, you’ll both be miserable.

As we went through all the steps outlined in my book Hiring and the Potter’s Wheel, it was obvious that hiring and training is the same no matter what industry. If you follow the steps the potter follows, you’ll end up with a team that is a work of art.

And when you’re a dentist, the better your hiring and training, the longer and stronger your staff becomes, the more time you can devote to taking care of your patients.

Okay, so I wasn’t that far out of my comfort zone. I believe in having fun helping others. Tonight I spoke to a group who believes the same.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The only thing about giving talks in my hometown is that the questions usually get around to the radio ads I would run and how they were different than everything else you heard on the air. I told them that presentation happens as soon as this one ends.

February 2, 2017

What Are You Doing to Grow?

I stood on the stage. It was small, in an awkward room with pillars that blocked sight lines. The room was supposed to hold 150 people, but I could see them setting up extra chairs in the back of the room. Even still, there were people sitting on the floor leaning back against those horrible pillars.

Three days earlier a gal who had seen this speech the year before told me how it had saved her store. That’s mighty high praise for any speaker. I was in awe. That speech had been my first to a group of retailers like this. To have that affirmation was amazing. She wasn’t the only one . Another retailer told me that the only reason he was back was because of what I taught. He took a front row seat to hear the same presentation again.

Back on the stage the microphone was hot. My voice was either a whisper or a boom no matter where I placed the lapel mic or where the sound guy turned the knob. I went with boom. The stage was too small and I was wireless. I walked the room, trying not to trip over the legs of people sitting by the pillars, all while making sure they felt acknowledged for being there.

I knew my slide deck by heart. Loved the new slides the Slide Doctor helped me create. Far better than the previous year. Everything flowed. The audience laughed at all of the jokes, went silent when I lowered my voice, and asked all the questions I wanted them to ask. If you’ve ever given a presentation, you know what I’m talking about. Public speaking nirvana.

All those A+ grades in my high school public speaking class just because I was good at improv, all those rowdy dining halls filled with 6th graders teaching them a new song, all those classes in the Toy House with expectant parents in rocking chairs waiting to be illuminated, even all those moments when the little red light went on to tell me we were on the air, none felt quite like this.

It wasn’t a standing ovation (unless you count the people sitting on the floor getting to their feet). But I can still hear the applause. One hundred and thirteen of the roughly 175 people in that room filled out their evaluations. All one hundred and thirteen gave the topic a perfect 5.0 out of 5.0. All one hundred and thirteen gave the presenter (me) a perfect 5.0 out of 5.0. The room itself got a 3.2 for lack of chairs among other issues.

It was Mary Lou Retton at the Olympics. It was Michael Phelps in the pool. It was the 1972 Miami Dolphins. It was seven years, dozens of presentations and eight perfect scores ago.

That’s why I’m signed up for a one-day Speakers Workshop in April.

Confused?

The point is this. No matter how good you (think you) are, no matter how experienced, you can always get better. Every year I hear business owners say they want to grow, but then they go watering the wrong plants. Your experience and training got you this far. If you want to grow your business farther, you need to grow yourself first.

You’re already reading this blog. That’s a good start. I encourage you to spend some of your precious time and energy strengthening your own roots. The more you grow, the more your business grows with you.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Read books. Read blogs. Watch YouTube videos. Listen to podcasts. Sign up for webinars. Go to seminars and workshops. Hire a coach. Find a mentor. There are many ways to fertilize your growth. Ask me if you’d like suggestions. (I just did the same thing – asked a bunch of my peers for new reading material for 2017 and got a list started.)

PPS Pricing for Profit (I knew you’d ask.)

January 27, 2017

Not All Retail Experience is the Same

It dawned on me what a hypocrite I was last week. I was doing some talks to retailers at a conference and in my introduction I bragged about getting my start in retail at the age of seven when my grandfather paid my sister and me ten cents an hour to put price tags on boxes. My official start in retail came just after my fourteenth birthday back in 1980 and my full-time career in retail began April 30, 1993 – as if all those dates were important.

I say that because at the end of my talk I share a quick story about my book Hiring and the Potter’s Wheel and how all other books on hiring say Hire For Experience. As I tell the audience in my presentations, I used to hire for experience until I realized you can have twenty years of retail experience and still be lousy at it.

See the hypocrisy?

In my book I teach that you should hire personality traits suited for the job. Without those traits, there is no amount of training that can turn them into the kind of staff you want. Experience can sometimes be a negative because that means you have a lot of bad habits to break.

Yet I sell myself on exactly that – being experienced. It begs the question… When is experience bad and when is it good?

BAD EXPERIENCE

The only truly bad experience in retail is when someone is put in a job that doesn’t match his or her personality traits. Fortunately, since you will be hiring for personality traits first and foremost, that won’t be an issue. Sure there will be applicants who worked at stores with lousy (or non-existent) training programs. Sure there will be applicants who worked at stores with low bars of expectations. Sure there will be applicants who worked for less-than-stellar managers who never recognized and developed the talent below them. None of those are deal killers if your applicant has the character traits you need. Just remember that you’ll have to break a few more bad habits early on.

GOOD EXPERIENCE

Some businesses have a reputation for high levels of service. That experience works in an applicant’s favor. If you have an applicant with the right character traits and five years of experience at Nordstrom’s – ka-ching! If you have an applicant with the right character traits who worked for a company who holds regular training exercises – ba-da-bing! If you have an applicant with the right character traits who moved up the ranks at a business known for service – rama-lama-ding-dong!

When we announced our closing I had several businesses reach out to ask about the availability of my staff because those businesses knew what I expected and how I trained my team. Many of my staff moved on to bigger and better things in part because of the reputation of our store.

Experience by itself is neither a good nor a bad thing. When you find someone with the right personality traits and the right kind of experience you will find some real superstars (if you can afford to pry them away from their current jobs). It is all about getting the right traits for the job first. Their experience only tells you how many more bad habits you may or may not need to break.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The non-hypocritical part is when I explain what I did with my experience at Toy House including getting the store named “One of the 25 best independent stores in America” in the book Retail Superstars (George Whalin, Penguin 2009), winning the Entrepreneurial Vision Award in 2010, and how my Core Values of Fun, Helpful, Educational and Nostalgic were a perfect fit to toy retail (and a perfect fit to my new role as a Retail Educator).

January 24, 2017

You’re Not Perfect

You’re not perfect. Far from it. Me, too. You will make mistakes. You will ruin someone’s Christmas. You will cause someone gray hairs. You will make someone miss an appointment because they had to deal with your carelessness.

You will have some problems that aren’t even your fault. Maybe your vendor screwed up or the customer had a completely unrealistic expectation even after you explained it for the third time. Maybe you get the good spouse, bad spouse routine.

No matter what type of retail, you are going to have the unhappy customer.

I believe two of my favorite companies – Ritz-Carlton and Zingerman’s Deli have it right.

(source unknown)

They both empower their entire staff to be able to take care of a customer’s problem. Everyone from the assistant bottle washer to the garden boy to the valet have authorization to take a customer’s wrongs and make them right.

It does beg the question… Would you leave the fate of your customer service reputation in the hands of your lowest paid employee?

Yes! If you train them right.

Here is the easy format for handling about 98.7% of your unhappy customers.

Apologize. It doesn’t matter who is at fault. They are angry. They perceive you have slighted them in some way. Apologize to them. “I am really sorry that this happened.”
Ask. Ask for a complete description of what happened and what went wrong from their perspective. Don’t interrupt. Let them say what is on their mind. Don’t assume you know what happened. Let them tell the whole story. Apologize again, if necessary.
Amend. Make it right. The best way to make it right in their eyes is to ask, “What would you like us to do?” Most of the time, especially if you have done steps 1 and 2, they will ask for far less than what you are prepared to do. Do what they asked, and then a little more. Yes, even if you’re giving away the farm (figuratively, of course).
Learn. Let your staff make the customer happy. Then have them report back to you what they did. As long as they made the customer happy, tell your staff, “Well done!” Then show them a better way to handle it the next time if necessary.

You have to train your staff to do this. It won’t happen overnight. You have to role play it at meetings. You have to spell it out in writing. You have to remind them that the store’s first and foremost goal is to have happy customers and their job is to make those customers happy. Your job is to teach them how.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Unhappy customers are people, too. Treat them with respect and dignity (apologize and listen fully to their complaints) and they become a lot less unhappy in very short time. In fact, they often become your best ambassadors.